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Oceania is, to the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), a stage for continuous diplomatic competition. Eight states in Oceania recognise the PRC, and six recognise the ROC. These numbers fluctuate as Pacific Island nations re-evaluate their foreign policies, and occasionally shift diplomatic recognition between Beijing and Taipei. In keeping with the "One China" policy, it is not possible for any country to maintain official diplomatic relations with "both Chinas", and this "either/or" factor has resulted in the PRC and the ROC actively courting diplomatic favours from small Pacific nations.[1][2] In 2003, the People's Republic of China announced it intended to enhance its diplomatic ties with the Pacific Islands Forum, and increase the economic aid package it provided to that organisation. At the same time, PRC delegate Zhou Whenzhong added: "[T]he PIF should refrain from any exchanges of an official nature or dialogue partnership of any form with Taiwan".[3] In 2006, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao announced that the PRC would increase its economic cooperation with Pacific Island States. The PRC would provide more economic aid, abolish tariffs for exports from the Pacific's least developed countries, annul the debt of those countries, distribute free anti-malaria medicines, and provide training for two thousand Pacific Islander government officials and technical staff.[4] Also in 2006, Wen became the first Chinese premier to visit the Pacific islands, which the Taipei Times described as "a longtime diplomatic battleground for China and Taiwan". Similarly, according to Ron Crocombe, Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific, "There have been more Pacific Islands minister visits to China than to any other country".[5]

There were approximately three or four thousand Chinese people living in Tonga in 2001, thus comprising 3 or 4% of the total Tongan population.[6]Chinese Tongans are Tonga's main ethnic minority group, and have been subjected to significant levels of racism, including racist violence, since the late 1990s.[7][8]

In 2000, noble Tu’ivakano of Nukunuku banned all Chinese stores from his Nukunuku District. This followed alleged complaints from other shopkeepers regarding competition from local Chinese.[9] In 2001, Tonga's Chinese community was hit by a wave of about a hundred racist assaults. The Tongan government decided not to renew the work permits of over 600 Chinese storekeepers, and admitted the decision was in response to “widespread anger at the growing presence of the storekeepers”.[10]

These events have had no noticeable negative impact on Sino-Tongan relations; in response to continued Chinese development assistance in 2011, Tongan Deputy Prime Minister Samiu Vaipulu spoke of the "warm relations between [our] two countries".[12]

Tonga has consistently recognised the People's Republic of China since 1998.

In 2001, Tonga and the PRC announced their decision to strengthen their "military relations".[13] In 2008, the PRC provided Tonga with military supplies worth over €340,000.[14]

In the wake of riots in Nuku'alofa in 2006, China's Export-Import Bank gave Tonga a $118m loan at an interest rate of only 2% with payments now deferred until 2018. Much of it was used for construction, and paid to Chinese construction companies.[15]

In April 2008, Tongan King George Tupou V visited China, reaffirmed his country's adherence to the "One China" policy, and, according to the Chinese State news agency Xinhua, "supported the measures adopted to handle the incident in Lhasa".[16] King Tupou V also met Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie to "enhance exchange and cooperation between the two militaries". Xinhua stated that China and Tonga have "fruitful cooperation in politics, economy, trade, agriculture and education, and kept a sound coordination in regional and international affairs".[17]

In June 2009, Radio Australia reported that it had "obtained a document" sent from the Chinese embassy in Tonga to the Tongan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The embassy expressed concern about two Falun Gong members who were visiting Tonga to express their beliefs to Tongans. The Chinese authorities described them as "anti-China", and asked Tonga to take "immediate and appropriate actions" regarding a situation which might harm Sino-Tongan friendly relations. In another document Radio Australia stated it had obtained, Tonga's Secretary for Foreign Affairs instructed police and defence officials to help preserve "Tonga's good relations with China". Radio Australia reported that the two women had allegedly been questioned by Tongan immigration officials, as a result of the Chinese embassy's request.[18]

In 2013, China gave a 60-seat Xian MA-60 airplane to Tonga's airline Real Tonga. This caused some tension between Tonga and New Zealand, because tourism dropped after the New Zealand airline Air Chathams pulled out of Tonga in order not to face subsidized competition and the New Zealand government posted a travel advisory about the safety of MA-60 airplanes.[15][19]

1.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing

2.
Tonga
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Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is a Polynesian sovereign state and archipelago comprising 169 islands of which 36 are inhabited. The total surface area is about 750 square kilometres scattered over 700,000 square kilometres of the southern Pacific Ocean and it has a population of 103,000 people of whom 70% reside on the main island of Tongatapu. Tonga stretches across approximately 800 kilometres in a north-south line and it is surrounded by Fiji and Wallis and Futuna to the northwest, Samoa to the northeast, Niue to the east, Kermadec to the southwest, and New Caledonia and Vanuatu to the farther west. Tonga became known in the West as the Friendly Islands because of the reception accorded to Captain James Cook on his first visit in 1773. He arrived at the time of the festival, the yearly donation of the First Fruits to the Tuʻi Tonga. According to the writer William Mariner, the wanted to kill Cook during the gathering. From 1900 to 1970, Tonga had British protected state status, the country never relinquished its sovereignty to any foreign power. In many Polynesian languages including Tongan, the word tonga means south, the name of Tonga is cognate to the Hawaiian region of Kona. In Malay, the name of Tonga is also cognate to the word Tenggara, an Austronesian-speaking group linked to the archaeological construct known as the Lapita cultural complex reached and inhabited Tonga around 1500–1000 BCE. Scholars have much debated the exact dates of the settlement of Tonga. Not much is known before European contact because of the lack of a writing system, in the 15th century and again in the 17th, civil war erupted. The Tongan people first encountered Europeans in 1616 when the Dutch vessel Eendracht, captained by Willem Schouten, later came other Dutch explorers, including Jacob Le Maire, and in 1643 Abel Tasman. In 1845, the young warrior, strategist, and orator Tāufaʻāhau united Tonga into a kingdom. He held the title of Tuʻi Kanokupolu, but had been baptised by Methodist missionaries with the name Siaosi in 1831. Tonga became a state under a Treaty of Friendship with Britain on 18 May 1900. The treaty posted no higher permanent representative on Tonga than a British Consul, under the protection of Britain, Tonga maintained its sovereignty, and remained the only Pacific nation to retain its monarchical government. The Tongan monarchy follows a succession of hereditary rulers from one family. The 1918 flu pandemic, brought to Tonga by a ship from New Zealand, killed 1,800 Tongans, the Treaty of Friendship and Tongas protection status ended in 1970 under arrangements established by Queen Salote Tupou III prior to her death in 1965

3.
Oceania
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Oceania, also known as Oceanica, is a region centred on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. The term is used more specifically to denote a continent comprising Australia. The term was coined as Océanie circa 1812 by geographer Conrad Malte-Brun, the word Océanie is a French word derived from the Latin word oceanus, and this from the Greek word ὠκεανός, ocean. Natives and inhabitants of this region are called Oceanians or Oceanicans, as an ecozone, Oceania includes all of Micronesia, Fiji, and all of Polynesia except New Zealand. New Zealand, along with New Guinea and nearby islands, part of the Philippine islands, Australia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, in geopolitical terms, however, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia are almost always considered part of Oceania. Australia and Papua New Guinea are usually considered part of Oceania along with the Maluku Islands, puncak Jaya in Papua is often considered the highest peak in Oceania. Oceania was originally conceived as the lands of the Pacific Ocean and it comprised four regions, Polynesia, Micronesia, Malaysia, and Melanesia. The area extends to Sumatra in the west, the Bonin Islands in the northwest, the Hawaiian Islands in the northeast, Rapa Nui and Sala y Gómez Island in the east, and Macquarie Island in the south. Not included are the Pacific islands of Taiwan, the Ryukyu Islands and the Japanese archipelago, all on the margins of Asia, and the Aleutian Islands of North America. The islands at the extremes of Oceania are Bonin, a politically integral part of Japan, Hawaii, a state of the United States. There is also a geographic definition that excludes land on the Sunda Plate. Biogeographically, Oceania is used as a synonym for either the Australasian ecozone or the Pacific ecozone, Oceania is one of eight terrestrial ecozones, which constitute the major ecological regions of the planet. The Oceania ecozone includes all of Micronesia, Fiji, and all of Polynesia except New Zealand, New Zealand, New Guinea, Melanesia apart from Fiji, and Australia constitute the separate Australasian ecozone. The Malay Archipelago is part of the Indomalaya ecozone, related to these concepts are Near Oceania, that part of western Island Melanesia which has been inhabited for tens of millennia, and Remote Oceania which is more recently settled. The term is used to denote a continent comprising Australia. New Zealand forms the corner of the Polynesian Triangle. Its indigenous Māori constitute one of the cultures of Polynesia. It is also, however, considered part of Australasia, the history of Oceania in the medieval period was synonymous with the history of the indigenous peoples of Australasia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia

4.
Taiwan
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Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is a state in East Asia. Neighbours include China to the west, Japan to the northeast, Taiwan is the most populous state that is not a member of the United Nations, and the one with the largest economy. The island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, was inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines before the 17th century. After a brief rule by the Kingdom of Tungning, the island was annexed by the Qing dynasty, the Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War. While Taiwan was under Japanese rule, the Republic of China was established on the mainland in 1912 after the fall of the Qing dynasty, following the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945, the ROC took control of Taiwan. However, the resumption of the Chinese Civil War led to the ROCs loss of the mainland to the Communists, and the flight of the ROC government to Taiwan in 1949. As a founding member of the United Nations, the ROC continued to represent China at the United Nations until 1971, in the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization, creating a stable industrial economy. In the 1980s and early 1990s, it changed from a one-party military dictatorship dominated by the Kuomintang to a multi-party democracy with universal suffrage, Taiwan is the 22nd-largest economy in the world, and its high-tech industry plays a key role in the global economy. It is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, health care, public education, economic freedom, the PRC has consistently claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and asserted the ROC is no longer in legitimate existence. Under its One-China Policy the PRC refused diplomatic relations with any country that recognizes the ROC, the PRC has threatened the use of military force in response to any formal declaration of independence by Taiwan or if PRC leaders decide that peaceful unification is no longer possible. There are various names for the island of Taiwan in use today, the former name Formosa dates from 1542, when Portuguese sailors sighted the main island of Taiwan and named it Ilha Formosa, which means beautiful island. The name Formosa eventually replaced all others in European literature and was in use in English in the early 20th century. This name was adopted into the Chinese vernacular as the name of the sandbar. The modern word Taiwan is derived from this usage, which is seen in forms in Chinese historical records. Use of the current Chinese name was formalized as early as 1684 with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture, through its rapid development, the entire Formosan mainland eventually became known as Taiwan. The official name of the state is the Republic of China and it was a member of the United Nations representing China until 1971, when it lost its seat to the Peoples Republic of China. Over subsequent decades, the Republic of China has become known as Taiwan. In some contexts, especially ones from the ROC government

5.
Wen Jiabao
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Wen Jiabao was the sixth Premier of the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China, serving as Chinas head of government for a decade between 2003 and 2013. In his capacity as Premier, Wen was regarded as the figure behind Beijings economic policy. From 2002 to 2012, he held membership in the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, the de facto top power organ. He worked as the chief of the Party General Office between 1986 and 1993, and accompanied Party general secretary Zhao Ziyang to Tiananmen Square during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In 1998, he was promoted to the post of Vice Premier under Premier Zhu Rongji, his mentor, Wen was dubbed the peoples premier by both domestic and foreign media. Instead of concentrating on GDP growth in cities and rich coastal areas, Wen advocated for advancing policies considered more favourable towards farmers. Wens government reduced taxes and pursued ambitious infrastructure projects. Following the global crisis of 2008, Wens government injected four trillion yuan as part of a stimulus program. He left office in 2013 and was succeeded by Li Keqiang, a native of Beichen District, Tianjin, Wen Jiabao went to the Nankai High School from which his predecessor premier Zhou Enlai graduated. He joined the Communist Party of China in April 1965 and entered the force in September 1967. Wen has a background in engineering and holds a degree from the Beijing Institute of Geology. He studied geomechanics in Beijing and began his career in the bureau of Gansu province. From 1968–1978, he presided over the Geomechanics Survey Team under the Gansu Provincial Geological Bureau, Wen succeeded in office, rising as chief of the Gansu Provincial Geological Bureau and later as Vice-minister of Geology and Mineral Resources. Wen was discovered by then-general secretary Hu Yaobang, and joined the ranks of the Central Committee, after Wen was promoted to work in Beijing, he served as Chief of the Partys General Affairs Office, an organ that oversaw day-to-day operations of the partys leaders. He remained in the post for eight years, Wen has built a network of patronage during his career. Throughout this period Wen was said to be an administrator and technocrat, having earned a reputation for meticulousness, competence. Wen served as Secretary of the Central Financial Work Commission from 1998 to 2002, Wens most significant political recovery occurred after accompanying Zhao on his visit to students demonstrating in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Wen Jiabao is the only Chief of the Partys General Affairs Office to have served under three General Secretaries, Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, and Jiang Zemin

6.
Overseas Chinese
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Overseas Chinese are people of Chinese birth or descent who live outside the Peoples Republic of China and Republic of China. People of partial Chinese ancestry living outside the Greater China Area may also consider themselves overseas Chinese, Overseas Chinese can be of the Han Chinese ethnic majority, or from any of the other ethnic groups in China. The Chinese language has various terms equivalent to the English Overseas Chinese which refers to Chinese citizens residing in other than China. The term haigui refers to returned overseas Chinese and guīqiáo qiáojuàn to their returning relatives, huáyì refers to ethnic Chinese residing outside of China. Literally, it means Tang people, a reference to Tang dynasty China when it was ruling China proper. It should be noted that this term is used by the Cantonese, Hoochew, Hakka and Hokkien as a colloquial reference to the Chinese people. The term shǎoshù mínzú is added to the terms for overseas Chinese to indicate those in the diaspora who would be considered ethnic minorities in China. The terms shǎoshù mínzú huáqiáo huárén, shǎoshù mínzú huáqiáo huárén, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the PRC does not distinguish between Han and ethnic minority populations for official policy purposes. For example, members of the Tibetan diaspora may travel to China on passes granted to certain overseas Chinese. Various estimates of the overseas Chinese minority population include 3.1 million,3.4 million,5.7 million, cross-border ethnic groups are not considered overseas Chinese minorities unless they left China after the establishment of an independent state on Chinas border. Some ethnic groups who have connections with China, like the Hmong or Mongolians may not associate themselves as overseas Chinese. The Chinese people have a history of migrating overseas. One of the dates back to the Ming dynasty when Zheng He became the envoy of Ming. He sent people - many of them Cantonese and Hokkien - to explore and trade in the South China Sea, when China was under the imperial rule of the Qing Dynasty, subjects who left the Qing Empire without the Administrators consent were considered to be traitors and were executed. Their family members faced consequences as well, however, the establishment of the Lanfang Republic in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, as a tributary state of Qing China, attests that it was possible to attain permission. The republic lasted until 1884, when it fell under Dutch occupation as Qing influence waned and these migrations are considered to be among the largest in Chinas history. Most of the nationalist and neutral refugees fled Mainland China to Southeast Asia as well as Taiwan, many nationalists who stayed behind were persecuted or even executed. Kuomintang members who settled in Malaysia and Singapore played a role in the establishment of the Malaysian Chinese Association

7.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common

8.
Lhasa
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Lhasa is a city and administrative capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the Peoples Republic of China. Lhasa is the second most populous city on the Tibetan Plateau after Xining and, at an altitude of 3,490 metres, the city has been the religious and administrative capital of Tibet since the mid-17th century. It contains many culturally significant Tibetan Buddhist sites such as the Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple, Lhasa literally means place of the gods. Lhasa is first recorded as the name, referring to the temple of Jowo. By the mid 7th century, Songtsän Gampo became the leader of the Tibetan Empire that had risen to power in the Brahmaputra River Valley, Bhrikuti is said to have converted him to Buddhism, which was also the faith attributed to his second wife Wencheng. In 641 he constructed the Jokhang and Ramoche Temples in Lhasa in order to house two Buddha statues, the Akshobhya Vajra and the Jowo Sakyamuni, respectively brought to his court by the princesses. Lhasa suffered extensive damage under the reign of Langdarma in the 9th century, when the sites were destroyed and desecrated. A Tibetan tradition mentions that after Songtsän Gampos death in 649 C. E. Chinese troops captured Lhasa, Chinese and Tibetan scholars have noted that the event is mentioned neither in the Chinese annals nor in the Tibetan manuscripts of Dunhuang. Lǐ suggested that this tradition may derive from an interpolation, tsepon W. D. Shakabpa believes that those histories reporting the arrival of Chinese troops are not correct. From the fall of the monarchy in the 9th century to the accession of the 5th Dalai Lama, however, the importance of Lhasa as a religious site became increasingly significant as the centuries progressed. It was known as the centre of Tibet where Padmasambhava magically pinned down the earth demoness, islam has been present since the 11th century in what is considered to have always been a monolithically Buddhist culture. Two Tibetan Muslim communities have lived in Lhasa with distinct homes, food and clothing, language, education, trade, by the 15th century, the city of Lhasa had risen to prominence following the founding of three large Gelugpa monasteries by Je Tsongkhapa and his disciples. The three monasteries are Ganden, Sera and Drepung which were built as part of the puritanical Buddhist revival in Tibet, the scholarly achievements and political know-how of this Gelugpa Lineage eventually pushed Lhasa once more to centre stage. The 5th Dalai Lama, Lobsang Gyatso, unified Tibet and moved the centre of his administration to Lhasa in 1642 with the help of Güshi Khan of the Khoshut. With Güshi Khan as a largely uninvolved overlord, the 5th Dalai Lama, the core leadership of this government is also referred to as the Ganden Phodrang, and Lhasa thereafter became both the religious and political capital. In 1645, the reconstruction of the Potala Palace began on Red Hill, in 1648, the Potrang Karpo of the Potala was completed, and the Potala was used as a winter palace by the Dalai Lama from that time onwards. The Potrang Marpo was added between 1690 and 1694, the name Potala is derived from Mount Potalaka, the mythical abode of the Dalai Lamas divine prototype, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. The Jokhang Temple was also expanded around this time

9.
Falun Gong
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Through moral rectitude and the practice of meditation, practitioners of Falun Gong aspire to eliminate attachments, and ultimately to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Falun Gong was first taught publicly in Northeast China in 1992 by Li Hongzhi and it emerged toward the end of Chinas qigong boom—a period which saw the proliferation of similar practices of meditation, slow-moving exercises and regulated breathing. It differs from other schools in its absence of fees or formal membership, lack of daily rituals of worship, its greater emphasis on morality. Western academics have described Falun Gong as a discipline, a spiritual movement. By 1999, government estimates placed the number of Falun Gong practitioners at 70 million and this demonstration is widely seen as catalyzing the persecution that followed. On 20 July 1999, the Communist Party leadership initiated a nationwide crackdown and it blocked Internet access to websites that mention Falun Gong, and in October 1999 it declared Falun Gong a heretical organization that threatened social stability. As of 2009, human rights groups estimated that at least 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners had died as a result of abuse in custody, some observers put the number much higher, and report that tens of thousands may have been killed to supply Chinas organ transplant industry. In the years since the persecution began, Falun Gong practitioners have become active in advocating for human rights in China. Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi has lived in the United States since 1996, inside China, estimates suggest that tens of millions continued to practice Falun Gong in spite of the persecution. Hundreds of thousands are estimated to practice Falun Gong outside China in over 70 countries worldwide, Falun Gong is most frequently identified with the qigong movement in China. Qigong is a term that refers to a variety of practices involving slow movement, meditation. Qigong-like exercises have historically practiced by Buddhist monks, Daoist martial artists, and Confucian scholars as a means of spiritual, moral. The modern qigong movement emerged in the early 1950s, when Communist cadres embraced the techniques as a way to improve health, the new term was constructed to avoid association with religious practices, which were prone to being labeled as feudal superstition and persecuted during the Maoist era. Early adopters of qigong eschewed its religious overtones and regarded qigong principally as a branch of Chinese medicine, in the late 1970s, Chinese scientists purported to have discovered the material existence of the qi energy which qigong seeks to harness. At one time, over 2,000 disciplines of qigong were being taught, the state-run China Qigong Science Research Society was established in 1985 to oversee and administer the movement. On 13 May 1992, Li Hongzhi gave his first public seminar on Falun Gong in the city of Changchun. Falun Dafa is said to be the result of his reorganizing and writing down the teachings that were passed to him, the practice identifies with the Buddhist School but also draws on concepts and language found in Taoism and Confucianism. This has led scholars to label the practice as a syncretic faith

Colourful Air Chathams Fairchild Metroliner on the tarmac at Whakatane Airport. The aircraft is used exclusively by the airline to maintain a scheduled air service between the Bay of Plenty town and Auckland International Airport.